What We Get Wrong About Each Other: Collateral Contempt
Summary: This is part of our explainer series, where we cover key More in Common concepts. Coco Xu, one of our Research Managers, writes about Collateral Contempt, when traditionally non-partisan communities and institutions are caught in the crossfire of partisan animosity. What is collateral contempt, who is affected by this phenomenon, and what should we do about it?
What is collateral contempt?
Since the 1980s, partisan animosity has been steadily on the rise in the US. Simply put, Americans increasingly have negative attitudes towards members of the opposing political party.1 But in our climate of heightened political polarization, hostility is not just reserved for people across the aisle. It may also be directed towards communities and institutions that are perceived to be associated with the other side politically – such as faith groups, social clubs, school boards, and so on. When people assume that certain communities hold political beliefs they disagree with, they can form negative views towards those very communities.
At More in Common, we dubbed this phenomenon “collateral contempt”— or when partisan animosity spills over to non-political groups.
We initially discovered this phenomenon whilst studying Americans’ attitudes towards religious groups in our Promising Revelations study, which explores Americans’ misperceptions about Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities.
We first found that many Americans inaccurately equate Evangelicals with Republicans. When asked what proportion of Evangelicals in America are Republican, Non-Evangelicals on average think that six in ten Evangelicals are Republicans, whereas the real number is less than half.
We were interested in the implications of this misperception. We already know that Democrats and Republicans have increasingly negative attitudes towards each other. Would this mean that, by extension, Democrats also have a negative opinion towards Evangelicals if they associate this faith group with Republicans?
To answer this question, we asked Americans about their feelings of warmth towards Evangelicals. We then ran a series of regression analyses to see if there’s any statistical relationship between misperceptions about Evangelicals and feelings of warmth towards this community.
Indeed, our analyses found a linear relationship: the more Democrats and Independents overestimate the percentage of Evangelicals who are Republicans, the more negatively they feel towards all Evangelicals. In other words, the more Democrats and Independents associate Evangelicals with Republicans, the more they dislike Evangelicals.
Similarly, we found that the more Democrats associate Catholics with Republicans, the more likely they have negative views towards Catholics generally. Both Evangelicals and Catholics are subject to “collateral contempt.” That is to say, the partisan animosity that people have towards Republicans becomes generalized towards an entire faith community based on their supposed political affiliation.2
Other forms of communities and institutions may also be subject to collateral contempt due to their supposed political affiliation or positions on controversial topics. Since publishing the Promising Revelations study, I have heard from individuals across different fields on how collateral contempt has played out in their own lives. A researcher shared the following with me:
“I love the collateral contempt concept as I see it being applied to so many arenas, e.g., collateral contempt for someone just because they have cop friends, or because they disagree with loan forgiveness.”
In today's political discourse, where we tend to try to classify almost everything along political lines, it is not uncommon for us to try to assume other people’s political identity based on certain attributes, characteristics, or their single viewpoint on an issue that society might code as "left leaning" or "right leaning." In doing so, we miss seeing people for their whole selves, their beliefs, and identities that transcend our political binaries.
Collateral contempt may even extend to the highest powers in the US. Perceived partisan alignment of traditionally non-partisan institutions, such as the Supreme Court, may lead to lower levels of trust and higher levels of animosity. More research is needed to understand how political polarization and partisan animosity spills over to different individuals and types of communities due to misperceptions and stereotypes.
How should we mitigate collateral contempt?
Since animosity towards a group is associated with the misconceptions about that group, correcting misperceptions of different communities should be a high priority. More in Common’s research has found that Americans often have distorted understandings of Democrats, Republicans, and different faith communities, on a number of topics ranging from immigration to racial justice, faith and politics, and teaching American history (see more in our previous newsletter on Perception Gaps).
Luckily, Americans’ perceptions are not fixed. Showing evidence-based research combined with personal stories that challenge assumptions can help shift people’s views and reduce hostility.
For organizations, commentators, and storytellers, emphasizing the diversity of political views and perspectives within a given community is also an important way to address collateral contempt. Collateral contempt hinges on overgeneralizations that reduce communities into monolithic blocs. Highlighting stories and voices that challenge or diverge from common stereotypes can disrupt the cycle where misperceptions brew fear and enmity.
Lastly, as Pastor Tom Breeden calls for in his essay for One America Movement’s newsletter, it is important to ask ourselves whether our assumptions about different communities stem from generalities or relationships.
As a Chinese immigrant, I’ve experienced my share of generalizations – people assuming on first look my political beliefs, national allegiance, or even personality based solely on my ethnicity. In those moments, I wished people would lead with curiosity rather than conclusions.
But working on the Promising Revelations study over the past two years has also made me reflect on my own blind spots. Despite knowing how frustrating it feels to be misunderstood or othered, I came to see how I too had formed opinions about the religious communities I’m not part of, often based on what I had heard from the news and social media.
What broke that pattern for me was to some extent the data we’ve uncovered, but it was more so the relationships we’ve built. Through this work, I’ve had the privilege of meeting people from a range of faith traditions, and the friendships we’ve formed have fundamentally altered my assumptions and reshaped my relationship with faith and spirituality. This journey has reminded me that mitigating collateral contempt and correcting misperceptions isn’t just about changing one’s views – it’s also about opening hearts and minds. Whether we are talking about people of faith, immigrants, or people with opposing political views, the path to understanding starts with self-reflections and connection.
Read the Promising Revelations study here.
Last week, we released our latest report, The Connection Opportunity, surveying over 6,000 Americans in the past two years. We found that seven in ten Americans feel a responsibility to connect – but a lack of opportunity stands in their way. Sign up for our first webinar, cohosted with Democracy Notes, here.
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Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034
We also found an inverse linear relationship between feelings of warmth and Republicans’ misperceptions about Evangelicals: the more Republicans overestimate the percentage of Evangelicals who are Republican, the more positively they view all Evangelicals. We're eager to conduct further research on how collateral contempt applies to groups that are commonly associated with Democratic party affiliation.